


The Unrequited Dream

by WanderingRivers



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Decisions made under the influence, Drunkenness, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-02-07 09:20:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12838128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WanderingRivers/pseuds/WanderingRivers
Summary: At the bottom of a bottle, Giles comes to a conclusion.





	The Unrequited Dream

The bottle of scotch beckoned him from the top of the refrigerator. His limbs were so wooden but the memories gnawed at him. Her beautiful brown hair floated in front of his mind's eye, sparkling smile stabbing him in the heart. His love for her burned inside him and he levered himself up from the armchair to totter to the kitchen. Reaching for the bottle, he almost fell, the remaining alcohol in his veins overwhelming his sense of balance for a moment. Knocking over a glass bowl in his efforts to remain upright, the crystal surface winked at him like she used to do before shattering into a thousand shards on the yellowing linoleum floor.

Everywhere he looked, reminders of his love stared at him. Memories haunted him like ghosts, reaching cold ethereal fingers into his soul and wrenching his heart in their grip. Grabbing at the bottle, he didn't bother with a glass. He wrenched the top off, and tipped the bottle over his open mouth, letting the rough scotch pour over his tongue, sliding down his throat to burn in his stomach before deadening his tattered heart.

She was gone, left in his bed as a gag gift by a sadistic monster beloved of his slayer. When vengeance rose in his heart, finally he understood Jenny and her people. Vengeance was a living thing; it does move from one generation to the next. And yet, when it was his time to take that vengeance, fueled by his hatred; his slayer, lover of that monster, stopped him with her love of him as a father. He lives and yet Jenny does not. Tears slip from his eyes, heart not quite deadened from the second fifth of scotch he's been drinking for an hour now.

He sinks to the floor, mindless of the glass shards on the linoleum that slice at his bare arms, long sleeves shoved up to his elbows. Cabinet doors seem to mock him with images of her in the wood grain on each door. Staring at the floor, he sees the impression her heels left when they danced together to old Frank Sinatra albums before it all went to hell, before Eyghon. More tears slip from his eyes, glasses long discarded. The bottle slips from his hand, scotch pouring out onto the floor as he pours out his heart in silent weeping.

A song floats in from a car idling outside, the lyric catching him in it's grip and holding him there in its grasp.

"I don't know what to do  
When she makes me sad

She is everything to me  
The unrequited dream  
A song that no one sings  
The unattainable  
She's a myth that I have to believe in  
All I need to make it real is one more reason

But I won't let this build up inside of me  
I won't let this build up inside of me......"

Levering himself up from the floor, he kicks the bottle of scotch without thinking. The bottle skitters across the kitchen leaving a trail of alcohol in it's wake. He tottered to the bedroom where she had been waiting for him in death. Bending down to pick up the legal pad on the floor, he almost fell once more but recovered himself just in time. Tears blurred his vision as he wrote out his instructions for the care of his home and things to Willow. She would understand. Had things gone different, she would have been dear Jenny's apprentice in the Craft. Yet fate was cruel and took her before her time.

With his choice made, he packed a small bag, drunkenness giving way to a lucidity he hadn't felt in ages. This was his choice. No longer did they need him. They could stand on their own and he, well, he would find the strength to make his dream real.


End file.
